Forum:Welcome to the help desk
Welcome to the help desk. This is the place to ask for help with anything related to the wikia. There are more help pages in Category:Help or you can also ask questions on the talk pages of any of the . See for more on how forums work and how to add new forums to the index. Using the forums Hmm... Still trying to figure out how this forum feature works. There aren't very clear instructions on how to use them, just how to build them. Perhaps that's something to consider for the future. -Gospel Lightfaith 20:11, 31 March 2007 (UTC) :Gah! Your AIM message says you're offline, you sneak! :P :Anyhow, they seem to function on simple editing. I'm going to ask if there may be a way to incorporate the ability to add to threads in the same manner that one adds to a post on Discussion pages. The WoW rep won't be back on until Monday, though. :In any case, we'll see about writing up some instructions for the time being. :--Lilithia 22:03, 31 March 2007 (UTC) Help desk How ironic. A help desk that we're not sure how to use! *grins* Thanks for taking on the rather massive project of moving the wiki host. This new one is very pretty. --Krelle 12:52, 1 April 2007 (UTC) :@Krelle >> Well, at least we're all learning together? :D :It's not quite too hard to figure out once you understand it a bit. I actually just jumped in feet first and tried to post something and just hoped it worked. XD :- Gospel Lightfaith 15:06, 1 April 2007 (UTC) ::It's all about the preview button eh? That's one great thing about the wikis - the open source. For my first page I just stole the code from Tai's, then switched the content around. Doesn't take too long to figure out though. ::--Krelle 22:08, 1 April 2007 (UTC) Some formatting tips And you believed me when I said I wouldn't be around on April Fool's Day? :P (Well, okay, I didn't think I was going to be online.) Normally I wouldn't edit someone else's posts, but I thought I'd use the previous ones on this page to demonstrate one way to keep track of conversations. My apologies if I've stepped on anyone's toes. :) All the "+" button does on discussion pages is add a new section, and show you only an empty edit box for that section so you don't have to look at the code for previous posts. You can start a new section yourself by scrolling to the bottom of the edit box and adding a top-level heading, surrounded with double equals signs, Like this . To reply to someone else's post, you can indent your comments by putting a colon at the beginning of each paragraph of your reply, :Like this. (That's typed ":Like this.") ::The more colons you use, the farther the reply is indented. If you wish to start a new conversation on a new page, rather than adding to an old one, you can use the "add new topic" button on the main page for each forum (like this page for the EarthenRing help desk). Best of luck to you, and please ask if you have any further questions; I'll be keeping an eye on the forums here, and I'm here to help! — Catherine o' the ComTeam 23:36, 1 April 2007 (UTC) Wiki time :I doubt anyone here would be too offended at a friendly reformatting. *grins* And look - I've learned a way to indent things! Genius... Thanks for the tip. :Oh - can we change the wiki time to EST? Or is that somewhere in the user preferences... ER is an East server, yes? :-Krelle 21:25, 2 April 2007 (UTC) ::The simplest way is to encourage users to alter the "Date and Time" tab in their own page -- they can refer to List of time zones (global) or Time offset (US only) to find the offset for their time zone. (It's -5 for Eastern Standard Time, and -4 for Eastern Daylight Time). This will alter the time display for that user on Recentchanges, watchlists, and history pages, but not the timestamp in signatures. ::There is a technical way to change site-wide time display by altering a PHP variable in the code, but I would see if the preferences will suit your needs first, and talk to the community about whether all of them would welcome the change. Hope that helps! — Catherine o' the ComTeam 18:32, 3 April 2007 (UTC) :::Catherine, I'm confident that the community would have no problem with our system time being set as Eastern Standard Time. The server which we play on has times expressed in EST, and even players not on the Eastern US seaboard are very familiar with the that timekeeping method--server time is how we communicate. In fact, on the old wiki I received questions why the wiki didn't express its time in EST. :::--Lilithia 20:27, 3 April 2007 (UTC) ::::I've asked the techs to take a look at it; should have an answer soon. Are all WOW servers on that time? — Catherine o' the ComTeam 22:25, 3 April 2007 (UTC) :::::Nah. It varies by server. :::::--75.109.30.15 22:58, 3 April 2007 (UTC) ::::I'm told that it will require tech intervention, which we can do. However, one aspect to consider before we make a final decision: user preferences affect the entire Wikia site, and could be thrown off by having your system time set differently. If a user on the US East Coast has the Offset in their preferences set to "-5" site-wide so that he sees all times in EST/UTC-5, and then comes here, they will see a time that is EST-5, or UTC-10. On the one hand, it's a confusing inconvenience for some people -- visitors who have already signed up with Wikia and set their preferences; on the other, it's a great convenience for your regular users. Let me know what you want to do. — Catherine o' the ComTeam 23:34, 3 April 2007 (UTC) :::::Good god. Only one extreme or another? No, it's not worth changing the system time for every wiki for one site. Thanks for looking into it, though! :::::--Lilithia 01:02, 4 April 2007 (UTC) ::::::Oh, no, you would only be altering the displayed time for your Wikia. :) But because a user's preferences are applied wherever they go in the entire Wikia network, it would have an effect on logged-in visitors who are not regulars here, who might not be aware of your time alteration -- a rather small proportion of your audience I think. — Catherine o' the ComTeam 05:31, 4 April 2007 (UTC) :::::::Doh. Sorry... been a rather long couple of weeks. Go ahead and have it changed, if that's all right. :::::::--Lilithia 06:21, 4 April 2007 (UTC) (unindent) Okay, I've been talking further with the tech team today, and it appears this is more complicated than it should be. (In fact, it may be prompting them to make some changes in the code in the future.) It appears the time displayed on Recentchanges, page histories and so on is very tied up with the internal code, and changing it would have several unpleasant side effects, so unfortunately we will not be able to do that just now. We can, however, alter the time that is displayed in the timestamp in signatures. Will that help? I have also created Template:Est -- wherever you insert it, using the code , it will insert the current server time converted to EST, like so: This time will change each time the page is refreshed. Hopefully that will be of use to you as well. I'm sorry we can't alter the time as easily as I thought we could. Is there anything else I can help with? — Catherine o' the ComTeam 05:35, 6 April 2007 (UTC)